Ophelia Deroy

I’m Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where I lead the Munich Interactive Intelligence Initiative—a growing network of 20+ core members and 20+ collaborators. Before that, I was Deputy Director at the Institute of Philosophy in London, and I still hold an associate research position there, with responsibilities for the link between philosophy, psychology and the GLAM sector.

My work has always centered on one big question: How do perception and experience come together from different sources—whether senses or individual perspectives? And more importantly, what happens when they don’t fully align?

On the theoretical side, I’m challenging the idea that these sources ever completely integrate, and I’ve developed new models to understand interactions on both an individual level and a social level. On the empirical side, I’m exploring why combining different viewpoints or inputs can sometimes lead to more accurate insights, higher certainty, or even better decisions—and other times, create ambiguity or reinforce biases. I examine these ideas in the context of perception and aesthetics, while collaborating on projects that focus on judgment and experiential interactions between humans and AI.

What sets my work apart is a blend of philosophical theory with empirical methods—starting with behavioral approaches and now moving more into computational and NLP techniques. I believe that these approaches don’t just complement each other—they’re necessary for tackling research questions. I have a first-hand experience on why it is both useful and challenging to connect methods.

In my consulting, committee work, and non-profit efforts, I’m particularly interested in how we can create more experiential and social ways to access information, like in art and science museums, and how knowledge sharing can happen across methods, as well as between academics and civil society.